Neither Denji, Yoshida nor their author can achieve normalcy
Let's look at Chainsaw Man as a narrative whole. There's no point in an author dealing with a subject that's already been dealt with, except to say something additional: so what does this chapter tell us?
Entitled "Normal Life", the chapter refers directly to Denji's previous dream: a normal life became Yoshida's offer to push him to stop being Chainsaw Man.
Fujimoto knows that you've understood that Denji intends to go beyond normality. This is something we learned from the whole of Part 1: normality had already been used by Makima to manipulate Denji. Here, things seem redundant, as Yoshida follows in the footsteps of the former antagonist. On top of that, while Denji was communicating and showing a certain emotional vulnerability, he's being sexually assaulted?
Why this chapter? Why tell it like it is? Fujimoto doesn't seem to initiate anything new, worse, erases his own developments.
The answer is easy, and Fujimoto gives it to us: this chapter is frustrating because it consciously shows you that he's incapable of writing and describing a normal life.
The first few pages serve to show that Denji is incapable of living anonymously and incognito when his environment permanently gravitates around the figure of Chainsaw Man. Denji literally finds himself in a fight to his detriment, and is punched in the face in the name of his heroic identity. Back in the face.
The second page serves to show that Denji can't achieve this so-called normativity by his past, by who he is, but above all by the way he's perceived by society and his guardians. He doesn't have a normal past, so how can he achieve a normal present? The others don't see him as lambda, so how can he become one?
The third thing that will prevent Denji from achieving this normal life is the man who intends to offer it to him: Yoshida. In his equally unconventional present as a demon hunter. He tells him explicitly: he has no idea what a normal high-school student does. Normal he isn't, since a normal high-school student is a professional cover for him.
Denji and Yoshida perceive a normal schoolgirl, that is, the ordinary life of a schoolboy, as something projected and unattainable. Just like the love of a hug is unattainable for Denji and Makima. Yoshida and Denji are distanced from it by this abnormality embedded in their daily lives: a demon.
Yoshida's assertion that the world won't end without Chainsaw Man also loses its meaning. Granted, Chainsaw Man isn't the only one to eradicate demons. But who will save the world?
How can a boy whose family includes a demonic little sister, and a demonic dog who is both his heart and his family, find his way in this normal life other than by being isolated?
In this empty room, doesn't it seem more like Chainsaw Man is deliberately isolated? Trapped in this normal life he can't quite fit into. Whether it's because of his identity as Chainsaw Man, as Denji, whether it's because Yoshida offers him this girl who looks like a demon who literally followed orders to sleep with him, this sex-obsessed boy?
Why abruptly cut off Denji's realization that he's in a bad way? With this demon-like girl sexually assaulting him? Why does this ending seem so abrupt?
Because what Fujimoto is indicating is that he's not capable of writing a normal life for Denji either, that his writing will never be gentle, that his character will never be able to give himself up in appropriate, normal circumstances: that a trauma will always resurface.
Whether it's the demon that prevents him from accessing the life projected before him, or the demon that brutally cuts him off from his confessions by attacking him. Fujimoto confronts his own hero, who no longer knows what to do?
Make love? In a world populated by demons? In a world crawling with Chainsaw Man? With an author unable to depict a normal life without brutally interrupting it, frustrating his own reader?
The normal life we'd all like Denji to have: neither he, nor the man who offers it, nor the man who writes it, will give it to us.
jacobvanloon
